The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-04-16
SIN AND ITS PUNISHMENT.

For the enlightened Christian con-
science, righteousness is conformity to
| the declared will of God, as revealed to
us in our humanity, in nature and in
the Bible. The revelation which God
makes to us through these sources is
the knowledge we receive concerning
his will regarding moral growth and de-
velopment. Our knowledge from these
sources is mainly this; the law of God
is not an arbitrary, irrelative, disc0n-
nected decree, coming out of the mere
wantonness of power or his vicious use
of it; it is a constructive principle, a
plastic energy. 1t is not that God says
arbitrarily, that we shall not do certain
things, and we shall do certain other
things; it is that our whole being, ply
steal, mental and moral, is founded upon
great principles and elementary reali-
ties. All revelation from God is MAX
ing known to us of these principles
and realities. To know Gods will is
to know of the existence and the ma
ture of these vital, organic truths. To
do Gods will is to live in harmony with
these, to preserve vital relations with
the organic forces of our being. To dis
turb these relations and forces is to per-
vert and distort our own nature. Sin
is the transgression of the elementary
moral order of our being. TO sin, is to
distort our nature, to pervert our fac
ulties, to turn them aside from their
natural action, to wrest them from their
true, symmetrical growth. Sin, in its
nature, is perversion of power, distor-
ton of faculty, prostitution of principle.
A sinful soul is out of harmony with
itself, with its own native energies and
plastic forces.
Another thought. Not only man
himself, as human organism, but the
whole order of things is founded upon
certain final truths. The supreme end
of all things is Swallowed forth in
the apostles affirmation that God has
appointed Christ heir of all things, and
''framed the ages with reference to
him." God was in Christ recOnciIing
the world unto himself. The drift of
the ages is toward this reconciliation of
all things to God. The spirit in the
wheels of human effort, and thought,
and feeling, and suffering, and hope, is
the spirit of the infinite God of love
Through all this wheel within wheel
God leads. In spite of all seeming con-
tradictiOns and discrepancies +; all that
seems partial, accidental or insecure,
they are making for and fulfilling the
divine purpose. The tendency of all
lines and branches of industry, of all
that is subsidiary or partial in thought,
of all streams Of helpfulness, are to-
ward the perfect and the true as rivers
tend toward the sea.
Evil and wrong, wherever they APP
pear, transgress this law of tendenc
introduce diseord into this sublime
hymn of creation, break in upon the
soft rhythm of the universe. A sinful
soul, therefore, is out of harmony with
the eternal forces of God. A soul out
of harmony with its own nature and
with the universe has no hope OF ex-
pectation of peace; it is like troubled
sea casting up mire and dirt; its way
is turned upside down; it suffers tribu-
lation and anguish as an inevitable, I'M
avoidable consequence of its own ac-
ton and condition.
Again, thirdly, a soul enslaved by
sin is ignorant, languid, cold, unin-
spiTed its powers are inert; it is insen-
sible, torpid; it does not suffer, perhaps,
because it is too spiritless and sluggish;
it lives on, not so much as knowing its
own lost and undone state.